


Roots Like The Trees

by AyeWriteCara



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 08:10:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5084659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AyeWriteCara/pseuds/AyeWriteCara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah can still recall the feeling of before. That is to say, after he died but before Gansey...</p>
<p>(In which Noah contemplates his own mystery.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Roots Like The Trees

**Author's Note:**

> The title is inspired by the song “Haunting” by Halsey. Her album “Badlands” is my soundtrack to The Raven Cycle.
> 
> It's also worth noting that I have only read the first two books, The Raven Boys, and The Dream Thieves, so I apologise for any inconsistencies regarding details from Blue Lily, Lily Blue, which I have just started.

_“You're already dead!”_

It doesn't matter how many times Ronan says it. It still stings.

Noah knows he is dead. It isn't easy to forget when he sees Gansey and Blue, or Adam and Ronan, their flickering glances and fluttering teenage hearts, their flushed pink skin in the balmy Virginia heat. Every detail is a kicker, a sharp, cruel reminder that he is not one of them.

Ronan seems to think that when you are dead, nothing hurts.

Ronan is wrong.

When you're dead, when you're a ghost, you can still feel. At least Noah can. Physical pain is an echo, like a memory, but emotions are real. Like fear. It comes from inside and Noah doesn't like it. Ronan says Noah shouldn't be afraid of anything because he is dead. Like, what can be worse than death? You only die once after all.

Except Noah doesn't. Blue sees him die over and over again, acting it out, like a grotesque pantomime that escapes him like a dream upon waking.

His memory gets a little muddled but Noah can still recall the feeling of _before_. That is to say, after he died but before Gansey. Life after death was lonely. All the stories of weeping, wailing spirits, Noah realised, were not all mumbo-jumbo. He had become a tragic stereotype. He hung around the school, long after the ‘Missing’ posters with his smiling face on them had been torn and discarded or covered over with sign up sheets for the rowing team or the debate club or the science fair. He vacated Aglionby the day Barrington Whelk took the Latin teacher position, although not before he had scattered the desks and chairs and broken all the windows of the classroom. He had been crying pitifully on the lacrosse field when, for the first time in more than five years, someone spoke to him. At first he was sure he was mistaken; he looked around for another boy but he was alone, except for Gansey who sat down on the grass next to him and looked him straight in the eye.

“Hey.” Gansey wore his now familiar easy smile and the same Aglionby uniform Noah wore (and would wear eternally, he had thought, miserably).

“Hey,” Noah echoed, testing his voice. He hadn’t spoken in a long, long time. It made him feel even more sad to hear how alien he sounded.

From that moment, Noah had a friend in Gansey, and he had a home again at Monmouth Manufacturing. Ronan came next, then Adam, and finally, Blue. Noah was a Raven boy again.

Now, during the clammy nights at Monmouth, when Ronan is asleep, dreamless, and Gansey is awake, pouring over Welsh lore or delicately adding to the model of his beloved Henrietta, Noah watches quietly from the shadows. Sometimes when Noah feels sad or frightened his energy sputters and he begins to fade like a poor facsimile of himself. Sometimes the others can't see him. Sometimes he doesn't want to be seen. He is there, mostly. He watches them.

He wonders what _after_ will feel like. After Glendower. After Blue and the boys have gone away, to college or for work, or to get married. All the things Noah will never do.

If they find Glendower (“ _when_ ,” Gansey insists, with the confidence and sure smile of a politician), Noah thinks about the favour each of them might ask. Strangely, although they speak frequently about how they will find him, none of them ever talk about after, but Noah supposes when he was seventeen (alive and seventeen), he never thought about after either. He thought about his car, his plans for the weekend, whether or not he would ever manage to do a full 360 kick flip on his skateboard. He thought about Whelk. He didn't really care about ley lines. He didn't think Whelk would cave in his skull with his board before he even had a chance to worry about his future.

Noah guesses Blue will ask for her “kiss curse” to be lifted. Adam will likely ask for all the prestige and privilege he envies Gansey for. Ronan is a mystery even to Noah. He is already the boy whose dreams come true.

_Do Welsh kings grant favours to dead boys?_

“It's creepy, you know. Watching people sleep.” Ronan’s eyes are closed, his voice drowsy.

Noah sits cross-legged on top of Ronan’s desk. He doesn't answer.

“I know you're there, Casper.” One beady, black eye cracks open, peering into the gloom. Noah pulls his knees into his chest and stays silent.

Ronan sits up. His eyes are alert now. Noah startles but realises Ronan isn't looking at him, rather, through him.

“ _Noah_. Come out, come out wherever you are,” he sing-songs. “You're starting to piss me off, man.”

Noah looks down at his hands and flexes his fingers. Even to his vision, he lacks form and clarity. He opens his mouth to speak and nothing comes out. He forces out a word - ”sorry” - and despite the effort, the sound is still muffled, fuzzy, like a bad phone line, far away.

In her cage, Chainsaw stirs and ruffles her feathers. Ronan pulls his sheet up to his chest. If the room is cold, Noah can't feel it. He uncrosses his legs and lets them dangle over the edge of the desk.

“Ah, there you are, you spooky bastard.” The words aren't unkind. Ronan pats the bed; an invitation.

Simply by making the decision to join Ronan on the bed, it is so. One moment Noah is perched on the desk, the next he is sitting on top of the sheets. Ronan flinches.

“Jesus. How did we never notice you're a goddamn ghost?”

Noah looks down at his hands again, fingers entwined, clasped on his lap. “I don't know.” His voice is quiet, but more present than it had been before. “I did tell you. It's like you just… didn't hear me.”

Stretching his arms up, Ronan tilts his head. The bones in his neck pop. “So,” he says, drawing out the vowel sound. It rumbles like a growl.

“So?” Compared to Ronan’s deep, rasping tone, Noah’s voice is soft, as it had been when he was alive.

“ _So_ , what's eating you? You're full-on haunting this place. Moping around like Jacob Marley. Also,” Ronan pushes him up, as if for emphasis. “What’s up with the poltergeist shit?” He holds his arm out; there are three red scratches on the bare skin between his elbow and the leather straps around his wrist.

“I was trying to wake you up,” Noah answers, weakly. “My energy… It’s kind of inconsistent. I’m sort of adjusting, I guess. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“Doesn’t hurt,” Ronan shrugs.

Noah crosses his legs again and pulls his knees up to rest his chin on them. “Can’t sleep?”

Ronan smiles lazily and rubs his hand over his shaved head. “Kinda hard to switch off when there’s two eyes watching you in the dark. What about you? D’you even sleep?”

“Nope.”

“Have you tried?”

Noah thinks of the bedroom next door, a space just for him, from Gansey. He had lain on the bed, even gotten under the covers, but he’d never slept.

“I zone out, I guess,” Noah says. “I don’t sleep.”

Leaning back against the headboard, Ronan glances over to Chainsaw who is still sleeping. Noah wonders if she dreams. He wonders if Ronan knows the answer, but he doesn’t ask.

“So, that's what's with the watchful spectre routine? You watch us sleep, because you can’t?” Ronan reaches onto his nightstand, picks up a carton of cigarettes and a lighter.

“I mostly just watch _you_. You shouldn’t smoke in bed, you know,” Noah says mildly.

Ronan rolls his eyes and taps a cigarette loose from the pack. He balances the tab between his lips. The lighter sparks and illuminates the room, exposing the shadows for a second. Ronan inhales and then sighs deeply, breathing out a cloud of sweet-smelling tobacco smoke.

“Just me, huh?” One spidery eyebrow rises high on Ronan’s forehead.

“I worry about you. About your dreams.”

The cigarette glows as Ronan inhales again. He reaches for a glass ashtray that Noah realises with some alarm is actually one of Gansey’s souffle dishes. One of a set.

“You don't need to worry about me or my dreams. Wouldn’t you rather be hovering above Blue’s bed? She’s prettier than me, don’t you think?” Ronan grins, wickedly.

Noah frowns and for a second he is sure that somehow Ronan has found out about the kiss. “I can’t go to Blue’s house. I mean, I can’t go in. All her aunts and cousins burning sage and laying down salt-”

“That’s voodoo bullshit, it’s not real, is it?”

Noah smiles and gives a lopsided shrug. “I don’t know, I’ve never tested it. But it seems rude to go where I’m not welcome and that’s a pretty clear ‘Keep Out’ sign, isn’t it?”

Ronan stubs his cigarette out. “Dude, I have to get some shut-eye.”

“I’ll leave you alone. Sorry for freaking you out.”

“Listen, man. You're way down the list of things in my life that freak me out, okay? Just, you know… say hi, alright?”

“Alright,” Noah says. “Goodnight, Ronan.”

“Goodnight, Casper.”

Noah leaves Ronan and Chainsaw in peace. He finds Gansey snoring softly on his mattress, his journal open by his side. His spectacles are balanced on the end of his nose, slightly steamed up by the breath from his open mouth. Noah hesitates before reaching out and gingerly lifting the glasses from Gansey’s face. He picks up the leather journal too and places them both on the desk. Gansey stirs.

“Ronan?”

“No. It's Noah. I was just… I'm sorry, go back to sleep.”

Gansey rubs his eyes and glances around the moonlit room. “Everything alright?”

“Yes.”

Gansey stretches and fumbles for his phone. He squints and touches his face, looking for his glasses. Noah hands them back to him.

“Wow, it's late. I must've dozed off.”

Gansey pulls his Aglionby sweater over his head and unbuttons his shirt. Noah turns his back. He keeps his eyes on the far wall and listens to Gansey unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants. When he faces the bed again, Gansey is dressed in monogrammed pyjamas.

“Hey, Gansey?”

“Yeah?” He smiles. It reminds Noah of the day they first met, when Gansey had been so kind to him on the grass field on the school grounds. He remembers that Gansey, Adam and Ronan have less than a year left at Aglionby. He thinks of _before_ and _after_...

Something in his expression betrays him, or maybe Gansey can read Noah’s pale face, just as he can Adam’s and Ronan’s.

“What's wrong, Noah?”

Noah touches his face where he knows the dark shadow is, the reminder of Whelk’s death blow. His cheek is wet with tears. His energy thrums like the heartbeat of a bird. The light bulb above their heads buzzes.

“Do you remember when we first met?” Noah whispers.

Gansey lips purse and his eyebrows pull together. “Actually,” he says, “I don't. No.”

“On the lacrosse field.” It doesn't sound like a statement; it's like begging. _Please, remember. Please, remember me._

Gansey looks at him blankly. It's an unusual expression for Gansey who is normally so informed.

Noah smiles tightly. “Never mind. Goodnight, Gansey.”

_I was nothing before,_ Noah thinks. _I'll be nothing after. There will be nothing left._

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fanfiction for this fandom. If you liked it (or not!), please comment. Kudos are always appreciated!


End file.
